


Champion

by olliolli_oxenfree



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Blood Magic, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 14:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8164616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olliolli_oxenfree/pseuds/olliolli_oxenfree
Summary: How Maria Hawke became a blood mage.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Can be found on Tumblr [here!](http://fleetingshadowdm.tumblr.com/post/146240529236)

The Arishok was going to kill her. Oh, Maker— _the Arishok was going to kill her_. He’d punched a damn hole in her stomach with that two-pronged sword of his. Two holes? Not important. One of her arms hugged her abdomen, failing to keep most the gore in. The other held tight to her staff. It was the only thing keeping her from falling prone, aside from that it was completely useless. Out of energy, the last vials of lyrium shattered on the floor. Aside from crawling over and licking it from the stones, which she had not abandoned enough of her pride for yet, it wasn’t an option. And her head was so _loud_.

Demons were no strangers to Maria Hawke. As long as she could remember they had been there. Whispering to her in the night and humming at the back of her mind in battle. It was the worst when she was in situations like this. They _yelled_ over one another to catch her attention. The cacophony in her head now? It drowned the sound of nobles watching the one-sided fight. One-sided. Flames. She might die. She _would_ die if she didn’t think of a way to—

The Arishok was charging again. With no time to summon a proper attack, the best she could manage was a blast of frost that dissipated the instant it hit the Qunari’s chest. Then his sword was coming up, and she didn’t have time to think of failed spells.

It hit her dead-on. _Four holes._ Two roars drowned her simultaneously. One from the watching crowd and one from the wall of demons in her head. Above them both rose a scream.

Isabela.

Right. Shit. She couldn’t die here. She was going to die here. She still had to give Isabela the lecture about Why You Shouldn’t Hide Thefts From Your Lover If You Stole Them From Qunari. She was going to die. She was going to roll or slide off this blade and go lick the lyrium from the dirt. She was going to die. She was going to freeze this bastard in place and pick him apart piece by piece. She was going to die _no, no please I don’t want—_

The world fell away from her. Or…did it rise up? Had she moved? Been moved?

Was she dead?

Some Golden City this was. Entirely black. A void. Then again, hadn’t the Chant said something about the darkspawn blackening the Golden City?

Maybe this wasn’t the best time.

Oh. She was in her head.

It made sense now. She could feel, and see, the demons pressing in on all sides. Another wave ready to drag her under and feed until there was nothing left. For once they were quiet. If it stayed that way, she might not mind dying.

There was a single one. In front of her. Small and robed in black. It…spoke to her. Or in her. It certainly sounded like most demons did, talking from inside her head. But she was inside now too. Maybe it was both?

**I can help you.**

_I don’t want your help._

**You need it.**

_I don’t need anything you offer me._

**Do you want to die?**

_…_

**Do you want to die?**

_No._

The first thing to come back was noise. Noise then sight then _pain_. She struggled to lift herself from the ground, coughing up globs that tasted of copper and bile. There was shouting, yelling. For once in her life, her mind was quiet during a fight. As her vision began to focus, she looked up at the Arishok and into his gaze. Mostly unreadable. There was respect there. Impression. She certainly felt the same.

He was also angry. And she too was very, _very_ angry. He charged again. She was still out of lyrium, but it didn’t matter. She had blood.

The first attack was a wall of force that she could _feel_ slam into the Qunari. The second froze the Arishok in place, forcing his hands to drop his thrice-damned weapons. The third and she was no longer using her blood but his: killing him from the inside as she choked him, stopped his blood and his heart altogether.

He fell and her arm gave out. She was pretty sure she won because she hit the tile second. Then she remembered she was no longer a child and this was no wrestling match with Carver she’d cheated in with magic. Then there were footsteps, voices, someone lifting her, and she was in that void again.

She might have blacked out, instead. There were no more demons. Except there _was_ a demon and it was inside her and she was inside it and she needed Aveline or Fenris or _someone_ to get Carver because he was the only templar she could trust to make it painless. She came to long enough to register a ceiling moving so quickly it made her ill and the feeling she wasn't moving very fast at all before she decided oblivion was better.

_Did I die?_

**Yes.**

_Am I still dead?_

**No.**

_How?_

**Your friend. The one with Vengeance inside him.**

_He brought me back?_

**He’s trying.**

And then she knew nothing but pain.

_He brought me back?_

**Yes.**

_I wouldn’t have._

**He almost didn’t.**

_Why did he?_

**His mage wanted him to.**

Waking up was a slow thing. A wood ceiling above her, a mattress firm at her back. Panic filled her and she struggled to rise. The Gallows. Where else would she be? She had just done blood magic in front of all of High Town.

“Lie down.”

Carver was sitting beside her. That wasn’t so bad. It would be, once Meredith decided to brand her and he was the one to take her to her fate, but for now it was alright. She took another look around. Her neck was too stiff to move.

“There’s too much red here.”

“You should talk. You’re the one who decorated.”

When?

Oh. This was her room. At the estate. The ceiling was her canopy.

Carver stood. “Where are you going?”

“To get your Warden. Aveline told him to rest, so I took up your watch duty.”

Aveline must have taken watch over Anders, as the two came in together. Anders had…done a pretty good job, once she could crane her neck enough to look. The scars were long and vivid, but they were _scars_. It hurt like a bitch to move.

Before he left, Anders grasped her hand tight. It would have been comforting, if it weren’t for the flash of arcane blue in his fingers. She felt a rising response, a threat and a sense of mocking success from her own demon to answer Justice. He left to get some shut-eye.

Over the next few weeks, they all came to visit. Mostly apart. They still had their own lives, after all. Despite her title as Captain of the Guard, Aveline was there more often than Varric. Even Sebastian dropped by, for what little time they had known each other. She was able to get an answer about the Golden City from him. The Tevinter magisters had been at fault, as Fenris was keen to back up. There was to be a banquet in her honor, she’d been told. Probably more than once. The pain of healing sometimes made it hard to focus.

Every so often, they all managed to crowd around her bed together. Either coming as one or, most commonly, staying long and coming earlier to where everyone had gathered. “Where’s Isabela?” she asked once, propped up against the pillows and realizing she still had an extra card to deal for Wicked Grace.

“She’s probably at the Hanged Man right now,” Merrill was quick to answer. “Telling everyone about how great you were. How great you _are_ , really. You don’t stop being great just because you stopped fighting.”

Varric lived at the Hanged Man. His silence was more of an honest answer. Aveline being paid to unguard.

It…was probably for the best.

Merrill was last to leave. She gripped her hand tight, and it was warm and firm and everything she needed. “They don't know. I won’t tell.”

That night, she learned how to talk to her demon without being on death’s door.

_What are you?_

**Despair.**

Made sense.


End file.
